Editorial: The Stars Must Shine

The Black Stars of Ghana will engage their Malian counterparts on Sunday, at the Baba Yara Stadium, in the final qualification match for the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations (CAN) in Angola, and the subsequent FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Although the Black Stars have already booked their qualification tickets for the above mentioned tournaments, The Chronicle on Saturday will wish to advise the Stars to put in their maximum effort to end the qualifying matches on a flying note. We are however disturbed about the fact that the Black Stars preparations towards this last match leaves very little to be desired. As published in The Chronicle of yesterday, Michael Essien is supposed to be launching his �Michael Essien Foundation� today 14th November 2009 at the State House in Accra. It has been reported that most of the senior players of the Black Stars will be in Accra to support Essien. Our worry is why the Ghana Football Association (GFA) would allow some players of the senior national team who are supposed to be in camp at Kumasi, to come down to Accra on the eve of such an important match to engage in a socialization event. If it is the GFA that sanctioned this camping aberration, then it seems they do not appreciate the essence of what camping a team is all about. The idea of camping players for a titanic match, against no mean an opposition like Mali, is to make the players stay focused for the task ahead and to prevent family, friends and the media from disturbing them. The question we ask is whether the GFA could not have planned together with Michael Essien to have his launching on Monday 16th November, a day after the match at the Baba Yara Stadium, so that all the Black Stars team and the officials would grace the occasion. If nothing could be done about the date for the launch, Michael Essien could have been excused for this match, which might give some of the budding stars the opportunity to justify their inclusion into the team. Why do we have to disturb the Coach�s training and camping regime by allowing the players to walk in and out of the team at such short interval? Is the GFA dropping its guard and being complacent because the Black Stars have already qualified for the CAN in Angola and FIFA World Cup in South Africa? A win in Sunday�s match against Mali will do a lot of good to the FIFA rankings of the Black Stars. We believe that a better FIFA ranking can determine the level of seeding for the Black Stars and the quality of friendly matches that we can attract. The Chronicle on Saturday wishes to caution the Ministry of Sports and the Ghana Football Association not to be lackadaisical in our approach to handling the Black Stars. The Black Stars is a marketing brand with huge pedigree all over the world, and if we can�t improve their image then the least we can do is to maintain it at where it currently is.